overthinkos/sway-browser-vnc

sway-browser-vnc

Minimal Sway desktop with VNC (wayvnc on port 5900) and Chrome (CDP on port 9222).

Box Properties

| Property | Value | |----------|-------| | Base | fedora | | Candies | agent-forwarding, sway-desktop-vnc, dbus, charly | | Ports | 5900, 9222, 9224 |

Quick Start

charly box build sway-browser-vnc
charly start sway-browser-vnc
charly status sway-browser-vnc          # Shows all probes: supervisord, cdp, dbus, charly, sway, vnc, wl
charly eval vnc status sway-browser-vnc
charly eval wl screenshot sway-browser-vnc screenshot.png

D-Bus and Notification Support

This box includes dbus and charly candies, enabling:

• charly eval dbus notify — native Go D-Bus notifications via in-container charly binary
• charly eval dbus list/call/introspect — full D-Bus interaction
• charly cmd — single command execution with desktop notification on completion
• charly tmux cmd — tmux command sending with notification
• charly status — supervisord, dbus, and charly probes

charly eval dbus notify sway-browser-vnc "Build Complete" "Image built successfully"
charly cmd sway-browser-vnc "make test"    # Notifies on completion
charly eval dbus list sway-browser-vnc          # List all D-Bus services

The notification daemon (swaync) is included via the sway-desktop metalayer.

Overlays

Fullscreen overlays for recording (via wl-overlay, included in sway-desktop):

charly eval wl overlay show sway-browser-vnc --type text --text "INTRO" --name title
charly eval wl overlay show sway-browser-vnc --type lower-third --text "Speaker" --subtitle "Role" --name lt
charly eval wl overlay show sway-browser-vnc --type countdown --seconds 3 --name cd
charly eval wl overlay show sway-browser-vnc --type highlight --region "430,290,510,50" --name hl
charly eval wl overlay show sway-browser-vnc --type fade --color black --name outro
charly eval wl overlay hide sway-browser-vnc --all

All overlay types render with true RGBA compositor transparency. See /charly-eval:wl-overlay for the full recording workflow.

Recording

Desktop video recording via wf-recorder (included in sway-desktop):

charly eval record start sway-browser-vnc -n demo --mode desktop
# ... interact ...
charly eval record stop sway-browser-vnc -n demo -o demo.mp4

Use as Selkies Remote Desktop Client

sway-browser-vnc can act as a test client for selkies-desktop, simulating how a real user would connect via browser:

# Both containers must be running on the charly bridge network
charly start sway-browser-vnc
charly start selkies-desktop

# Open selkies URL in sway-browser-vnc's Chrome
charly eval cdp open sway-browser-vnc "https://charly-selkies-desktop:3000"

# Interact with the remote desktop:
# Mouse: CDP Input.dispatchMouseEvent on the Selkies tab (with ~0.82x coordinate scaling)
# Keyboard: charly eval vnc type sway-browser-vnc "text" (passthrough via SPA's overlayInput)
# Screenshots: charly eval vnc screenshot sway-browser-vnc (shows full client desktop with stream)
#              charly eval cdp screenshot sway-browser-vnc $TAB (shows only the stream content)

Key limitations when using as a client:

• Super key consumed by sway (can't trigger remote labwc keybinds like Super+e)
• Ctrl+T/W consumed by local Chrome (open/close tabs locally, not remotely)
• Clipboard permission dialog appears on first connection — dismiss with charly eval vnc key Return or CDP Browser.grantPermissions

See /charly-selkies:selkies-labwc for detailed SPA interaction documentation.

Test Coverage

Latest charly eval live sway-browser-vnc run: 84 passed, 0 failed, 1 skipped (chrome-devtools-mcp-port references ${HOST_PORT:9224} which isn't mapped here — correct skip behavior).

Covers all 19 transitive candies: wayvnc (VNC), sway (compositor), chrome-sway, xdg-portal, waybar, swaync, pavucontrol, thunar, xfce4-terminal, pipewire, wl-screenshot-grim, wl-overlay, wf-recorder, desktop-fonts, fastfetch, asciinema, tmux, dbus, charly. Deploy-scope: VNC port 5900 reachable, Chrome CDP on port 9250→9222 with /json/version 200. Box-scope: sway + wayvnc both RUNNING under supervisord.

Related Skills

• /charly-selkies:sway-desktop-vnc, /charly-selkies:sway, /charly-selkies:wayvnc, /charly-selkies:chrome-sway, /charly-selkies:xdg-portal, /charly-infrastructure:dbus-layer, /charly-tools:charly, /charly-distros:agent-forwarding
• /charly-eval:eval — declarative testing framework (parent router for charly eval cdp|wl|dbus|vnc|mcp)
• /charly-eval:vnc — VNC automation on this box
• /charly-eval:cdp — Chrome automation (CDP on host port 9250)
• /charly-eval:wl — Wayland input/windows/clipboard (sway subgroup for compositor control)
• /charly-eval:dbus — D-Bus notifications via in-container charly binary
• /charly-build:charly-mcp-cmd — the box inherits 2 deploy-scope mcp: checks from the chrome-devtools-mcp candy (ping + list-tools asserting navigate_page/take_screenshot). charly eval live sway-browser-vnc --filter mcp runs them; note the port-publishing gotcha — if your charly.yml has an explicit port: override that predates chrome-devtools-mcp, port 9224 may not be published. See /charly-build:charly-mcp-cmd for the fix.

Related Boxes

• selkies-desktop — browser-accessible remote desktop (can be accessed from sway-browser-vnc's Chrome)

Related

• /charly-image:image — image family umbrella (box: entries in charly.yml, build/validate/inspect/list)
• /charly-build:build — build.yml vocabulary (distros, builders, init-systems)